Alongside snaps of the Royal Family as children playing in the grounds of palaces will be others of them on public engagements and state visits. The move coincides with the summer opening of Buckingham Palace and will include albums of recent royal trips to Canada and New York.

Parts of the Royal Collection - paintings, photos, drawings, sculptures and manuscripts collected over centuries - will also go online, including early photos of Queen Victoria.

The Queen's Flickr account goes live tomorrow with more than 600 images. She is already a Twitter subscriber and also has her own YouTube channel.

An aide said: "It's a way to reach a different audience.

Some of these photos have not been seen before, and others are usually on loan to museums."